


Lyra's Rebellion

by turnedherbrain



Category: His Dark Materials (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 15:56:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21430828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnedherbrain/pseuds/turnedherbrain
Summary: Lyra doesn’t believe in fairy tales where the heroine defeats the gobblers. Or does she?Set during ‘His Dark Materials’ s1 e2
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Lyra's Rebellion

**Author's Note:**

> I promised I wouldn’t write any His Dark Materials-inspired fic until near the end of s1. I’ve broken that promise to myself already. Oh well : )
> 
> Slightly canon divergent (in terms of the TV adaptation canon ; )) about when/how Lyra decides to escape Mrs Coulter’s.
> 
> Refs throughout to ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ – or at least, what I imagine is a HDM version of it.

Lyra remembered.

She remembered a time, less than a year ago. The cook had gathered the few children in the kitchen at Jordan College – most of them servants, or the children of servants – and had them seated in a semi-circle close to the hearth, the flames from the grate reflecting on the open-mouthed faces of her audience. The cook was in the midst of retelling a well-known story, and most of her listeners were rapt:

_‘And my, what big ears you have!’ said the girl._

_‘All the better to hear you with, my dear,’ said the beautiful lady. _

_‘And my, what sharp teeth you have!’_

_The gobbler licked her lips. _

The cook paused, and licked her lips slowly; dramatically, making sure every spectator could see.

_Said the gobbler: ‘All the better to…’_

The children screamed as the cook, growling like the hungry gobbler, rose swaying to her feet and, arms outstretched, reached for her nearest prey.

Only Lyra and Will, the oldest of the bunch and sitting out of arm’s reach, kept their courage. Lyra was relatively unconcerned by such cautionary tales – she’d heard the cook’s entertainment a thousand times before. Instead, she blew the scattering embers back into the hearth as the younger ones screamed about them. Will scrunched in his toes so the others didn’t trip.

‘D’ you believe?’ he asked Lyra, with apparent unconcern.

Lyra shook her head, while bedlam continued to reign. ‘No. I don’t believe in tales of other worlds. Or of gobblers disguised as beautiful women, coming to snatch us. I believe in _this_ world. And the only fantastical things I’ll vouchsafe for are those that my uncle shows me in his pictures.’

Roger, whose mind was far older and wiser than his small body would allow, mused on her reply. ‘I’m not so sure. I mean: I believe in what I see with my own eyes. But there’s got to be other things, both good and bad, right? Otherwise, who dreamt up the tales?’

‘Those are simply stories to tell children, Roger, so we don’t get out of control. That’s all.’

…

That was a golden time. Unrestricted – free of rules, if she chose to ignore them. Slip-sliding down rooftops, skittering along the wide guttering then looking down past jutting gargoyles from a perpendicular height at the central quad below. For an instant, Pan became a bird and she felt her heart could soar into the sky.

They would run pell-mell to meet the latest airship laden with visiting academics, right down at the very edge of the riverside, the Porter Meadow stop, and wait as people disembarked on the steep, narrow gangplank. Lyra always hoped always always that it would be her uncle, Lord Asriel, and hid her inevitable disappointment when it wasn’t, but then Roger would challenge her to a racing duel back across the quad, shouting: ‘Lyra, ‘s not fair!’ as she took a cheating head start.

That was a golden time.

Not now.

Now was a tumult. A ragged maelstrom of rage and upset, her thoughts piled up like scraps in the midst: _father… Asriel… why didn’t he?… gobblers… Roger… Oblation… Coulter… hurt… escape… father… no… must… Roger… hurt… father_

_…_

It had been a mirage, at the start. Not simply the beauty and grace that Mrs Coulter presented, compared with the fusty academics, but everything that came with it. The grand house, the apartment (_My, what a big house you have!_); even more so the people and places she could be introduced to_ (My, what friends you have!)_

But then came the slow-creeping realisation.

_My, what **friends** you have. _Those other friends, the ones she was meant to stay in her room and not see. And the restrictions. The utter, numbing restrictions! Even in the College, where she was supposed to be looked after, she’d had far more places to roam, and much more freedom, than this. And the sickening knowledge that those assurances – about looking for Roger – were wholly untrue. They were as empty as the smiles Mrs Coulter gave.

And then. Then the thinly-controlled rage, and the sudden pounce of that woman’s daemon; the strangulating touch. The touch! How _dare_ she! Not simply to touch. To subdue Pan. To savagely put them down. It was beyond reason. It was beyond comprehension. Hemmed in her bedroom later, Lyra was like a firework that, instead of dying out after the explosive has spent, is still flaming and refuses to die down.

‘Pan?’ she asked, that single syllable managing to convey all her anger over that final crossing of the line. And inside, a mixture of hurt and confusion about her father and _why_ he’d never told her, something she didn’t want to confess. ‘D’ you remember that story; the one cook always used to tell us, even when I was far too old to hear it?’

Pan cocked their smooth white head. ‘_Red Hood’s Rebellion_. I remember. I thought you didn’t believe?’

‘I don’t,’ Lyra sniffed into her silk pillow, curling up in her uncomfortably tight dress. Yet another restriction. ‘What happened at the end?’

Pan flowed gently into Lyra’s arms and finished the tale for her: ‘Red Hood beat the gobbler by escaping, and gathering a gang of friends to defeat her. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ yawned Lyra. She wouldn’t sleep that night. She would bide her time until they could escape. Pretend to submit. Eat her breakfast. Smile.

At her studies the next morning, Lyra was sitting straight-backed and innocent looking when Mrs Coulter stilettoed elegantly in, the furred monkey loping alongside. A firm hand was placed on her shoulder, fingers draped just so with a downwards pressure. Pan immediately cowered flat under the desk; the monkey’s eyes narrowed a flicker.

‘What’s that you’re studying Lyra?’ Mrs Coulter affected an interest.

‘History. Uprisings against kings. _And_ queens.’ Lyra took her thumb and scored the nail tip hard under a word on the page. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Coulter, but I’m having trouble with this word. _‘Insurr…’_ What does it mean?’

The woman leant over her shoulder to view the word she’d pointed out. Lyra could smell the scent of her; it was strangely untantalising, like she was rotten inside, despite her alluring appearance. ‘‘_Insurrection_.’’ Marisa Coulter read out. She stayed still for a few moments, while her monkey tipped forward on the balls of its paws. Lyra and Pan prepared themselves. ‘It means,’ continued her guardian/jailor. ‘It means very little for a girl such as yourself. Let me instruct you, as I have said continually since you have arrived here. And be wise. Do not learn things that are… _beyond_ your abilities.’

‘Then can I buy a dictionary?’ asked Lyra, with perfect innocence.

‘Whatever for?’ trilled Mrs Coulter, her smile grimly fixed. ‘Whatever you need is in your books. When you don’t understand, you ask me.’

‘But…’ insisted Lyra.

‘Get ready for the cocktail party. Your new blue dress.’ This was spoken to her as Mrs Coulter was walking away, her presence already dismissed. Only a backwards glance from her daemon, its eyes narrowed, showed what she was really thinking.

‘Lyra?’ asked Pan, running up the desk leg and onto the table top with their fur flattened.

‘Hold on Pan, I’m thinking.’ Looking down, Lyra saw that her thumbnail had left a faint underscore on the page under the word ‘_insurrection_’. Of course she knew what that word meant, and she’d chosen it on purpose. She’d had quite enough of Mrs Coulter’s gilded cage. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Pan. We’ll escape from here – the elevator, a window; it doesn’t matter: we’ll get out somehow. Then we’ll find Roger; meet up with the Gyptians if we can. I don’t think it’s safe for us to try and go back to Jordan College at the moment, Mrs Coulter will definitely look for us there. We should try to find my father, although I’ve no idea how; or where.’

‘Are you sure about all of this, Lyra? Leaving here might expose us to even more danger,’ counselled Pan, brown eyes beseeching.

‘Yes, I’m absolutely sure,’ whispered Lyra, aware that even now Mrs Coulter’s monkey could be observing them from behind the grille. ‘Every moment we spend here is like a blunt to who we are, and who we should be. I’ll put on that dress and parade like a marionette but that’s all I am to her: a doll. And if what I saw in those Oblation Board diagrams is true – then Roger and the others are in more danger than we could ever imagine.’

‘We may be able to take our chance this afternoon: Mrs Coulter will be preoccupied with the guests at the party.’

The cocktail party, then. The party would be when they’d aim to make their escape. She didn’t know it yet, but Lyra was about to become the heroine of her very own tale. Forget Red Hood – this was the start of Lyra’s own rebellion.


End file.
